A lean and hungry look for Porsche Penske Motorsport in 2026

IMSA’s GTP class in 2026 may look pretty familiar at first glance, but it’s in no way short of storylines for the Rolex 24 At Daytona and beyond. The most intriguing strand to follow concerns the reigning champion, Porsche Penske Motorsport.

In 2025, PPM blitzed the start of the season, winning the first four races – including the Rolex 24 and Sebring 12 Hours – before going on to capture a clean sweep of class titles. So much has changed, though, since the trucks left the paddock at Road Atlanta back in October. Car updates, driver roster changes and the loss of the World Endurance Championship side of the operation combine to place significant question marks over the team ahead of its fourth season campaigning the 963 across North America.

What was it that made the difference for Roger Penske’s factory Porsche team last term? Balance of Performance, of course, played its part, particularly during the team's win streak. Digging deeper, though, there were other elements that made a key difference. In the pits and on the strategy desk, the team was exceptional, the 963 itself matured nicely too with its Joker updates, and the driver crews in both cars were, on several occasions, the class of the field.

“The biggest thing I can say about the Porsche Penske Motorsport team in general is having both cars we enter operate at such a high level,” Team Penske President Jonathan Diuguid tells RACER. “Both cars won races last year and stayed consistent late in the season when the competition grew stronger. It’s easy to be motivated when you’re winning races or on the podium; it’s difficult when a good day is measured by whether you reach fourth or fifth.

“I look back at the Watkins Glen weekend as an example. We were running last and second to last for the majority of the race, and through execution on pit road and making the right decisions, we came away with a fourth-place finish on a day when one of our direct competitors, the No. 93 Acura, got it wrong. There was no champagne or cheers for finishing fourth, but that’s what put us in a commanding position.”

For the new season, Porsche expects that its new-look full-season driver squad and the new performance update for its 963 will keep it fighting at the sharp end.

On the driver front, Porsche’s LMDh pack has been shuffled – and reduced in size – in the wake of the WEC program's demise. From last year’s IMSA crop, Nick Tandy has shifted to GTD PRO with AO Racing and reigning GTP champion Mathieu Jaminet has joined Genesis, meaning he will not defend his crown.

Those departures mean the No. 6 is being steered by WEC standouts Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor this season, with Matt Campbell in for the longer races. And in the No. 7, Felipe Nasr returns to work with Laurin Heinrich and Julien Andlauer.

Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor have traded FIA WEC tracks and rivals for those in IMSA for 2026. James Moy Photography/Getty Images

For Estre and Vanthoor in particular, shifting to IMSA in the fallout of the WEC program's demise after becoming so embedded in the world championship is a big change.

“The only season I did in the past was with Park Place in 2014, and I missed a few races due to other commitments," Estre tells RACER. “Some tracks I don’t know, some I’ve not been to for 10 years. It’s going to be very new because I’ve been doing full-season WEC since 2017. At least there's familiarity with having Laurens, and our performance engineer on the No. 6 car for WEC – he’s here with us.”

There was plenty of buzz about PPM’s line-up being expanded for Daytona to include Penske IndyCar drivers Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden, after the duo tested with the team at last year’s postseason Sanctioned Test on the high banks. But Diuguid explained that their primary role was to give feedback on the car’s general direction from a fresh perspective, rather than prepare them to race in the Rolex 24.

“It was good to give them exposure and some feedback on the car. We wanted to give them an opportunity so we could get their take on where the car is,” he says. “They’ve driven it periodically, so it’s valuable because they can give an assessment over a long period of time. They’re not involved day to day like other Porsche Penske Motorsport drivers, so they can get a feel for how big a step we’ve made.

“We can get fourth drivers in at Daytona, it’s an opportunity. This year, we decided not to do it for a variety of reasons; it wasn’t because we weren’t happy with how they performed. We just decided on three driver line-ups this year.”

Can their absence be attributed to an increased level of competition and intensity of the IMSA Endurance Cup races in GTP? Does Penske feel that it’s perhaps too risky to put superstar drivers in the fourth seat of its cars for one-offs, regardless of their ability and performance potential?

“With Josef and Scott, you are not taking a performance deficit if you have them in a car,” Diuguid says. “It’s more about how much time each driver spends in the car in practice and those kinds of things. It’s not really a judgment or measurement of whether they brought value or not; they could bring value, but the additional management of having them in the car, when it comes to seat fitting in the car, getting enough time in practice….

“We just looked at it and felt that for this year, with all the changes going on, not just on the cars, but within the PPM program, just having stability with the drivers we have seemed like the right decision.”